Labels: self released
Review by: Oli Saunders
Human Hands are a fairly new band from Birmingham. They made some rough recordings at the start of the year and these are contained on this CDr, a demo made for a short tour they did with Évariste Galois in July. Most importantly, they play nineties emo, which is an incredibly unpopular music genre but also happens to be one of my favourite styles. There are never at any one time more than about five bands in the UK trying to play such music and I think I know about twenty UK bands fitting the description that have ever existed. There are probably a fair few others but I guess I’ll never hear them. Anyway, it’s amazing when a new bands does turn up out of nowhere and play this sort of thing; I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Human Hands play twice in the last few months and they’ve been fantastic both times; there are also strong hints that they will get better as time goes on.
The demo starts off with a short track, clocking in at just over a minute, but it tells you what to expect for the rest of the songs; a bit of feedback, fast drumming, shouted vocals, neat bass, and Clyde attempting to play his guitar as fast as is humanly possible. The band claim to be influenced by such classics as Assfactor 4, Twelve Hour Turn, The Red Scare, and Yaphet Kotto, and whilst not ending up sounding like any of these you can see parts of each in their sound. I personally would go with The Red Scare as being the closest to their sound. My favourite song is ‘Everything We Were’; the strained sung vocals halfway into the song are phenomenal, I really hope the band continues to utilise this vocal approach to some extent, since whilst the rest of the yelping is still great, the sung parts really stand out. The final song is the band’s epic track, nearly reaching eight minutes. A twinkly beginning builds up over the course of a few minutes before paving way to half sobbed vocals. It then quietens down before launching into the finale. A really nice end to proceedings.
Overall, the demo is a little rough but gives an excellent beginning for recorded output for the band. Some better quality recordings are on the way to being released which will hopefully be even more enjoyable. Well worth checking out and I know they are up for playing gigs out and about; it really would be great to see more UK emo bands in general, and more playing venues around the country.
31st July 2010